Am 10/27/2012 03:53 AM, schrieb Ariel Constenla-Haile:
On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 01:17:33AM +0200, jan iversen wrote:
I see, I have to get used to this license issues (a long time ago I
believed open source was just open source, then I joined an apache project).
It has nothing to do with licensing. Even if the extension code and all
its dependencies are under the ALv2, why should OpenOffice include
extensions by default in the install set? This goes against the concept
of an extension.
The fact that now there are three supported extensions is just
a question of old Sun/Oracle decisions to release these as extension and
not integrated as part of the application.
never mind.
Would it be to our advantage if we offered third party developers (that is
how I see extension developers) the possibility to register a language file
and get it translated as part of the language packs ?
This will break several concepts and things. Mainly extension developers
have complete freedom about when to release updates, how to integrate
translation in their extensions (use the configuration API and XCU
files, use the resource API and Java-property-like files, etc.), most
important what license to choose, etc.
Right. Then they are no longer independent from their own release plan
as they may would like to be.
Furthermore, I don't know how many extensions Sourceforge is hosting but
it could hundreads if not thousands. Lets assume 10% of them will say
"yes AOO, please translate the strings for me" then we have a lot more
to do. And who should verify the translations? If we, then we have to
install these hundreads/thousands extensions to see how it's working. If
the developer, then do we get feedback in time? What about errors, are
we able to fix them in time?
I think you can see now that the extension development has it own small
but fine ecosystem. It doesn't fit into the AOO release process and IMHO
this was never the idea.
However, thanks for making these thoughts. :-)
Marcus
In short, you will have to implement a new framework and force
extensions developers to use it. Besides several concerns, legal
concerns among them.
Or should we just say extension developers does not concern us (and help
AOO get more used) so we just look the other way ?
Programmability and extensibility has always been a priority in
OpenOffice, just read the Developer's Guide and other parts of the wiki.
I tend to agree that it will be useful for an extension developer a way
to submit a set of resource strings and get them translated, as long as
the extension developer is not forced with release/legal/other concerns.